Dr. Carrie M. Best -- A Tribute

Dr. Carrie M. Best
March 4, 1903 – July 18? 2001


I first met Carrie M. Best in December of 1969 and although it is not polite to give a woman’s age, she was 66 years old. Yet she was as spry mentally as a teenager and three times as curious.

When my law school friend, Clayton Rice, and I reached Mrs. Best’s Washington Street home in New Glasgow, we did not know what to expect. We carried letters of introduction from the then executive director of the Nova Scotia human rights commission, Marvin Schiff. The letters introduced us as researchers on behalf of the commission to investigate Mrs. Best allegations against the town of New Glasgow.

We had knocked on her front door and brought our briefcases into her home with us for the purpose of a formal introduction. Mrs. Best had us escorted into her kitchen by her daughter and we left our briefcases behinds us in her foyer.

By the time Mrs. Best joined us in her kitchen, she had already gone through our briefcases and she knew who we were, and that we had been sent out by the commission to investigate her allegations that the town of New Glasgow was behaving in a racist manner when dealing with black property owners in the Vale Road area, a largely black residential area.

I came to know what she had done because she later told us after we had finished a very hearty steak dinner prepared by Mrs. Best. To this day she stands out in my mind as one of the province’s great civil rights leaders.

Her 1946 campaign in her newspaper called: The Clarion in support of Viola Desmond, a Black Halifax businesswoman who was arrested and fined for sitting downstairs in the “White only section” in the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, is a monumental tribute to her sense of justice. She would fight alone, without support, as she had to on many occasions, until the rest of us understood that what she was saying had to have a champion.

Keep in mind, that New Glasgow theatre was the predecessor of the now large Sobey’s chain, Empire Theatres. To this day, every time I go into that theatre chain I remind myself of Viola Desmond and tell myself that the struggle for civil rights and justice shall never be over.

Miss. Desmond appealed her case twice, until on a mere technicality, the Jim Crow laws in Nova Scotia suffered a setback and today it is to these Black pioneers that we owe a debt of gratitude. We must be forever vigilant when it comes to protecting the rights of Black, and other, people.

Be counted at all times we must; it must never become a situation where our enemies can take comfort in the belief that we will not be proactive in support of our leaders, be it on school boards or in the political arena.

Letter writing campaigns to elected officials, authorized marches and public displays, are part of our democratic legacy and are appropriate methods of acceptable protest and may be lawfully used.

We must continue to assert ourselves as never before, especially in youth justice issues, in education, in human rights and in the affairs of the broader community.

I know that Dr. Carrie M. Best would expect that we speak up, for justice demands it; by so doing, I believe, we honor not only her memory, but memories of our many, other great Black leaders, to be chronicled on these pages.

If anyone knows the exact date of Dr. Carrie M. Best’s death, would you please advise me for my records?

fsjboyd@yahoo.com

For more information on Dr. Best's life click the link below:

http://www.parl.ns.ca/carriebest/index.htm

F. Stanley Boyd (c) February 18, 2006